Events

Carmel Ilan Triumph Gallery 

Lost Pages

Carmel Ilan creates forests, trees, figures, cypresses, butterflies and vistas. Leaning over a broad carpet of wood, joining slip of paper to slip of paper, hue to hue, she creates anew, with the most basic, primal raw stuff (paper, which is wood) all those original images.  And what are they?  A type  of ghost of what exists: that which is real, tangible, earthly.  They are not living vistas or people but markers thereof: view-totality, creature-totality, human-totality.  

Ilan’s textile studies, and her love of the material, are present at the very root of her work, which sometimes appears like fabric. The images for her work are chosen randomly.  It may be something she saw in an advertisement in a newspaper, while thumbing through a magazine, or while looking out of the window: but it is always an image that brings to the surface an emotional experience – rather like how touching fabric activates a sensory experience.  Ilan sketches the outline of the images she plans to produce; they then undergo abstraction and minimalization until the pure, existential and usually single image is arrived at. Her art turns diligent work and obsessive craft into a central theme, showcasing beauty and decorativeness that create the sense of wonder.  This is her tactic for trapping the viewer in her world of ghosts.

Ilan employs paper that narrates in order to speak about the transient.  The printed word, handed down from generation to generation, is the product of tradition, knowledge, and identity.  It appears to be on the brink of extinction.  If so, her work can be seen as conveying both an urgent desire to preserve this disappearing world and a sense of sorrow arising from the understanding that this is the way things will be.

Finally, there is a personal aspect at the source of Ilan’s creations:  she grew up in Jerusalem, home of the Western Wall, site of hopes and wishes written on small notes and posted to God.  For her, the works she produces are Western Walls where each slip of paper has its own special place.